


everyone blooms

by wobyl



Category: Homestuck
Genre: First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, Humanstuck, Kissing, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24142885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobyl/pseuds/wobyl
Summary: everyone blooms in their own timesome far ahead, some far behindso wherever you are, don’t worry,you’re gonna be fine, fine, finecause everyone blooms in their own timebrian sella, ‘everyone blooms’
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 8
Kudos: 152





	everyone blooms

The beach has always been an easy place to think. This particular stretch is almost always empty on weekdays, and the soft crashing of waves at your feet makes you feel like you’re floating. The breeze burns when you inhale too deeply, and your jaw still aches from the slug you took earlier, but calm settles over you regardless. 

It’s still bullshit that you got suspended and the other guy got off with a Saturday, but that particular cosmic affront is taking a backseat right about now. 

Now that they told you about the divorce, they’re making no effort to hide the fights from you. You’re alone in a house with two people who hate each other all day. 

Your head pounds when you think about it—they’re splitting up, you can’t even go to school to escape the shouting, and now that you’ve acknowledged it your usual beach-induced fugue state’s been broken. You’re hyperaware of the sand in your sneakers and the seagull screeching somewhere behind you and the sound of wheels against concrete on the sidewalk. 

You glance up at that, and the second you do the boy on the skateboard hits a rock and clips forward, falling flat on his face with the board stopped a foot away. 

You squawk like an imbecile and scuttle over immediately. “Oh fuck, oh _fuck_ , are you okay?” By the time you’re crouched next to him, he’s rolled over and sat up, sunglasses askew on his face and bits of gravel sticking to his cheek. His nose is bleeding like it’s broken in several different places. “ _Shit_ ,” you hiss, patting yourself down for a minute before pulling a packet of tissues out of your pocket and handing him a wad. 

Skateboard boy takes them with a nod of thanks and starts mopping up his face, righting his glasses in the process. 

The corner of his mouth twitches in a small smile when he catches you continuing to gawk in horror. 

“I’m cool, man. Happens all the time.”

“ _All the time?_ ”

“That’s the beauty of skating, dude,” he grunts as he stands, and you follow suit and hand him his board. “Don’t have to be good at it to look sick.”

You huff a laugh and give this guy a once over—you hadn’t gotten much of a look at him before he’d pancaked, and now that you can you’re... kind of upset at how attractive he is. His hair is all fucked up from the fall, and the knee his jeans exposed is bloody and looks kind of gross. All you can think is _wow this is unfair_ ; he’s tall and lithe and kind of tan, like he’s outside more often than not, and you notice a beat too late that he’s holding out his bloody knuckles for a fistbump. You oblige with a nod. 

“Thanks for the urgent care.” You smile in response, and then your eyebrows knit in worry. His nose has started bleeding again. 

You clear your throat. “Hey, uh... how far do you live from here?”

“Like half an hour by board, why?”

That’s way too far to go back with his face this fucked up. You tell him so and gesture toward the street. “I live right down the block. You should clean that up before you get an infection.”

Skateboy doesn’t seem to have any objections, because he follows along when you start hoofing it down toward your house. 

You find out his name is Dave on the way into your neighborhood, and the fact that he doesn’t laugh when you introduce yourself in return gives him points in your book automatically. 

Your parents’ cars are gone when you get back—of course they just left—so you tell Dave to stay put and hike it around back to squirm your way in through the bathroom window. It takes almost sticking the entirety of your foot in the toilet to get there, but you do, and by the time you’re half jogging around to your front door Dave is sitting on your kitchen counter looking smug. 

“The door wasn’t locked.” 

You heavily contemplate throwing something at him. You opt instead to scowl as menacingly as you can while actively wetting a towel for him to clean himself up with, handing it over with a grumble. He takes it with a flourish and a bow like you won’t deck him in the fucked up nose. 

Probably because he can tell you won’t. As is, you’re just trying not to stare at him. Mid afternoon sunlight streams in through your blinds—you hadn’t turned the light on when you walked in, and now the room is bathing in warm light and you’re sitting in your kitchen with a beautiful boy. 

Granted, this beautiful boy probably broke his nose in several places a minute ago, but still. He’s here and you’re here and oh god he was talking that whole time and you’ve just been staring at him like a dumbass. 

“... _secret emo shit?_ ” Dave looks at you over the brim of his shades while he works on cleaning his fucked up knee. 

You squint, and he repeats himself. “What were you doing alone out there, anyway?“

Somehow, you get the impression that what he initially said was a lot ruder. You wave a hand at him. “Thinking.” 

Dave nods. “S’a good place for that when it’s empty. Shit just kinda—“

“—melts away,” you mumble, and he nods like he gets it. 

“Dude, yeah. I’d be all over that shit if I lived nearby. You’d have to pry my ass off the sand with a crowbar.” Dave smiles at you a little and your brain fizzles. “If I wasn’t so ass at skating in the dark I’d be around all day.”

“I have a car,” you blurt, very narrowly stopping yourself from walking out into the ocean and never being seen again. “Fuck. I mean. If you wanna come to the beach... I could give you rides back to—uh. Wherever you live.”

Your face must be glowing right now. This guy definitely thinks you’re the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. No, scratch that, your idiocy this past twenty minutes has reached new heights. You’re out past the stratosphere now, baby, the hollowed out silicone mold you call a brain is orbiting the Earth at alarming—

“That’d be cool.” 

Or maybe not. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, man. Lemme give you my handle, we can work out a schedule or something.”

Dave gives you something close to a full on smile, and the tension in your chest unravels just a little. 

————

You two make fast friends—Dave is funny, and easy to talk to, and you can’t deny that the distraction is welcome. He makes an effort to text you whenever he can and you think, in some quiet part of your brain, that he might like you. Just a little bit. 

God, you hope that’s the case. 

You go to different schools, but take a lot of the same classes, so a lot of the time you’ll meet somewhere after school and do homework until Dave’s brother demands him home. The two of you have fallen into a rhythm. It’s nice, having a routine to count on, and it keeps you out of the house for the most part. 

By the time school gives way to summer, you two are inseperable. Dave had moved here from Texas a couple months ago and had yet to really make friends, and you tended to stay out of people’s ways at school, and actually having a _friend_ was still foreign to you. You aren’t completely sure how you went on this long without one. 

Whereas before you two would be killing time together from three to nine, now Dave just sorta.... showed up at some point before noon. He’s caught a couple screaming matches from the outside by now, you know he has, but because he isn’t a tactless idiot he’s yet to bring it up when you come outside. You don’t know what you’d tell him anyway, if he did. 

You both have a metric fuckton of summer work, and the diner a few minutes from your house has become your first stop most days. You eat and pretend to do work and kick each other under the table until it gets boring and then drive around until you find something else to do. A lot of the times that just means going to the park or back around to the beach and shooting the shit for a while, but neither of you have had any complaints so far. 

————

You’re sitting across from Dave in the sand, and you know for a fact he’s been talking for the past couple minutes but you couldn’t say what about if someone held a gun to your head. Both of you have been spending a lot of extra time outdoors since summer began, and the added sun has rosy freckles cropping up across the bridge of Dave’s nose. 

It’s been getting harder to pretend you don’t take regular breaks from whatever you’re doing to just watch Dave, sometimes. You’re bad at impulse control and he’s bad at noticing... at least, you hope he is. 

Pretending not to notice you zoning out at the sight of his face would be a pretty Dave move to make. 

He’s definitely noticed this time, because he trailed off a minute ago and is now staring right at you through his shades. You snap back to reality and stare right back for a couple seconds before he speaks. “You didn’t catch any of that, did you?”

“...no.” You glance away just as Dave leans over to punch you in the arm, and you bat his hand away with a grumble. “Oh, fuck you, it wasn’t on purpose!”

“I was sayin’ cool shit! You missed my entire presentation on why I think SBAHJ is gonna blow up this summer.” Dave frowns. 

You sigh, pulling your knees up to your chest and getting comfortable. “M’sorry. What else were you talking about?”

“Oh, no. You don’t get to listen to all that again. Limited edition thoughts, Vantas, you didn’t make it in time.”

He shrugs in a _hey, what can you do_ sort of way that’s just infuriating enough to make you launch at him, and he has the audacity to laugh when you both land backwards in the sand. You contemplate headbutting him and then promptly realize you’re sitting astride his thighs and he’s looking up at you and honestly, the only logical solution is to immediately shriek and roll off him onto your back. 

Dave looks at you like you’re out of your mind. You look back as your face feels like it’s going to overheat. He cracks a grin like he’s won and you kick him in the shin and sit upright. 

————

If someone were to ask you why you let this boy convince you to do absolutely anything, you’d probably have all sorts of stuttered excuse. As it is, though, one thing’s clear: you cannot say no to Dave Strider when he smiles at you, and in the months you’ve known this he’s both noticed and factored it into everything he does. 

You’ll have to come to terms eventually with the fact that your best friend is a sociopath. For now you’re weak, though, aren’t you? That’s why you’re standing on a familiar sidewalk right now, in a too-big helmet and too-big kneepads while Dave looks at you like you’re cornered prey. 

_Come on, Karkat, it’ll be fun,_ he’d said. _If you let me teach you to skate I’ll owe you one. We can watch all the shitty romcoms you want._ Like you’d take any convincing. The way his face had lit up when you agreed was more than you felt you deserved, anyway. 

You are now convinced this is a long-winded assassination attempt. 

Your legs won’t stop shaking under you when you climb onto the board, knees threatening to buckle with a fervor when Dave tries to steady you with a hand on your lower back. You can’t even fully enjoy the contact because you’re too busy clawing at his arm and trying desperately to stand upright. 

“You’re trying to fucking kill me,” you manage to gasp, and Dave snorts and places a foot on the board to stop you from moving. 

“Quit being dramatic, Kitkat. If I wanted to kill you I coulda just not lent you that sweet gear.” Dave knocks on your (his) helmet with the hand you aren’t still strangling and if you didn’t think it’d send your careening down the sidewalk at mach speed you’d punch him in the gut. 

You both settle eventually, and Dave manages to teach you how to roll without falling flat on your face. This entire situation is still terrifying, but by now you suspect it has more to do with the fact that he’s been holding your hand than your growing ability to keep your balance. 

Dave lets you go eventually, and when you don’t immediately fall over he smiles at you and nearly makes you do it anyway. “D’you know how to ride a bike?”

“Huh? No, never learned, wh— _FUCK._ ”

Apparently, he was asking because his next plan was just to push the board a little and send you rolling down the sidewalk without warning. You’re screaming expletives and trying to muster up the courage to brake when you see people approaching from the opposite end of the walkway, so you do the only thing you can think of and launch yourself back into the sand before you can crash into some poor unassuming family. 

It cushions your fall somewhat, and the board stops a couple yards away when it hits a n uneven section of path. Dave jogs over to where you’re curled up, laughing loud enough that for a second you forget to be mad at him for throwing you to the wolves. 

When he offers you a hand, you yank him down with you, and he joins you on the ground like a good sport and pulls a bramble off the sleeve of your jumper. 

The family gives you weird looks as you pass like you didn’t save their lives a second ago, and you have half a mind to flip them off but Dave is laying _really_ close to you right now and the sun is starting to set behind him, casting his head in a hazy orange glow. 

His shoulders are still shaking with laughter when he sits up all the way. “That’s enough learning for today.” He stands, pulling you up with him and swiping sand off your shoulder. “Wanna go feed the gulls?”

You grin and pick up the briefly forgotten skateboard. 

Worth it. 

————

It’s been raining. 

Today was muggy and cloying from the moment you woke up. They’d stopped fighting, briefly, anger seeming to plateau into a simmering spitefulness that you could absolutely live with. You’d started to think maybe things would work out after all. 

Your mother started drinking again, and your father’s being a self righteous prick about it, and they’d woken you up shouting and hadn’t really stopped in fucking _hours._

It’s exhausting. You never want to come back here. 

As is, your headlights are reflecting off wet pavement, hands clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that you wouldn’t be surprised if it got fed up with the treatment and gave way to dust in your grip. The light is still fucking red, _it’s been red for like ten minutes, who in fuckall is driving around this late at night that they think this long of a stop is warranted,_ what the fuck kind of system are they—

Your phone pings.

TG: hey man you on your way  
TG: im waiting outside whenever  


You sniffle and try to shake yourself calm as the light turns green. 

It’s way too late for you to be out on the roads, especially with the weather the way it is, but you hadn’t wanted to risk either of your parents seeing you around the house and grounding you in an attempt to make themselves feel better. Dave was being a good sport about it, at least. He’d responded to your semi-frantic HEY CAN I PLEASE COME OVER I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF THINK with a mi casa es su casa dude and a drive safe that’d been what made you start crying in the first place. 

Dave is too nice to you. You have to pay him back for all of this shit eventually, you know, but for now you’re idly wondering if his brother minds him having a guest at this hour as you pull into his complex’s parking lot. Now that you think about it, the few times you guys have hung out at Dave’s his brother was never home. The guy‘s pretty elusive, if what Dave’s told you is any indication. They don’t seem to be all that close. You aren’t completely sure how you feel about him.

Tears are now drying tacky on your cheeks as you walk into the building and upstairs to the Strider apartment. This building has no fucking elevator, and they live on the top floor. By the time you’re at Dave’s door your lungs are burning. Belatedly, you realize that it probably wouldn’t be smart to knock in case Dave’s brother’s actually home this time. 

CG: I’M OUTSIDE.

You hear soft footsteps from inside—which you think must be deliberate in some way, because you know Dave can move without a sound—and then the door opens, and you’re greeted by the most unguarded you’ve ever seen your friend look. His hair is fluffy like it just air dried, bangs clipped up to the top of his head and shades hanging off his shirt. He’d told you a couple months ago about his light sensitivity, but the apartment looks dark aside from the subtle glow of a TV and a lamp in the corner of the room. He’s in tartan pajama pants and an eyesore of a SBAHJ shirt and you’re tempted to start crying again. 

Dave speaks before you can. “Plan on campin’ out in the hallway all night?” 

Okay, wow, fuck that voice. Either he’d already been asleep when you texted or he was just about there, because the drawl only comes out when he’s tired and he’s talking way down low and maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. You feel a twinge in your chest when you consider going back home, though, so you settle for shooting him a scowl and stepping past into the living room. The door shuts behind you and you sigh. 

“Sorry for all this, I know it’s sudden as fuck and I didn’t really explain much but I promise I’ll get you ba—“

Dave shushes you, waving you backwards until you oblige and settle onto the couch. He joins you after taking a detour for a blanket, and then he’s next to you in all his sleepy glory and draping it over your shoulders. You pull it tighter and settle in.....

And Dave just looks at you. 

It’s unsettling to be able to see his eyes so clearly. Most of the time you can just assume he’s making eye contact, but now you’re staring right at each other uninhibited and your eyes are still puffy from crying. You wipe them on the back of your sleeve and sigh. He isn’t gonna talk until you tell him what’s wrong. 

“S’your brother home?”

“Nah. At a gig for the weekend.” Dave pulls his legs up onto the couch with a shake of his head. “D’you... wanna talk about it?” 

You shrug. “Haven’t tried to. It, um... they were getting better, or I thought they were, and then- it was worse, all of a sudden. Dad keeps threatening to kick her out and she keeps threatening to take me with her, and I’m sixteen, I should be able to make that fucking decision myself but neither of them seem to give a shit about me right now unless they’re using me as a fucking pawn in their shitty arguments and I’m _so tired of it._ As soon as they told me about the divorce they stopped trying to hide it.” You started crying again at some point there. Your face is hot and wet with excess tears and you try hard not to get them on Dave’s blanket, bottom lip wobbling. You feel pathetic. 

Speaking of Dave, he’s watching you intently, soft concern etching his features now that you can see them properly. He blinks, after a second, apparently realizing you’re done talking. “That blows, man.” His mouth is pressed into a line, and he shifts closer to put a hand on your shoulder. This is a bona fide heart to heart, huh? This is really happening. You’re talking about feelings. 

“I just.... FUCK, dude. Why get married if you were always that different? They had to have known.”

“Dunno. People get together for the wrong reasons all the time.” Dave gives your shoulder a squeeze and then his hand is rubbing carefully up and down your back, deft fingers tracing the knobs of your spine through a layer of fleece. You give into the sensation and sigh, melting against his side a little. He doesn’t seem to mind. 

You’re seriously considering kissing him. Can’t let him know that, though, so instead you nod along to his words and press the heels of your hands into your eyes until you’ve mostly stopped crying. 

Dave elbows you a little and you look up, squinting when you see the look on his face. He’s smiling in that way he does when he gets a bad idea.

“...what?”

“Bro’s not gonna be back til at least Monday night...” 

You raise an eyebrow. 

“I c’n lend you pj’s n shit. Not gonna let you drive back home this late...” Dave punctuates his sentences with multiple elbows into your ribs, and you huff, slapping his arm away with a frown. 

“You’re sure I can stay over?”

Dave nods. “Positive.”

————

You wake up the next morning sitting slumped against Dave’s side, blanket now around both of you and cheek smushed into his shoulder. You end up having to leave Saturday night, but the respite was welcome while you had it.

Dave hugs you goodbye and tells you to drive safe again and you very nearly eat it on the way downstairs. 

————

“She wants to move out of state.”

You’d gone swimming, for once, both of you in trunks and tshirts that now cling to your skin with drying salt water. Your hair is slowly curling against your temples as the waves crash around the both of you, sitting shoulder to shoulder with your feet barely touching the slow ebb of the tide. 

It’s dark, and everyone who’d been around when you got here has long since gone back home. You and Dave remain, sitting a little too close, voices a little too quiet, and you can see him looking at you out of the corner of your eye but you can’t make yourself return the gaze. 

Dave tries to follow your stare a moment and ends up looking at the same cracked shell you’ve been analyzing for the past ten minutes. “...d’you wanna go with her?”

You snort. “Fuck that. I’m not starting senior year somewhere new. S’just... weird, I guess. That she’s leaving like that.” 

“Fuck her,” Dave chimes, and you nod at him before the conversation lapses again. 

Summer is coming to an end. The nights are getting colder by the week, the happy buzz of locusts in trees giving way to a new school year. You counted, the other day—out of the eighty-ish days of summer break you’ve had thus far, you’ve only missed seeing Dave once. He’d ended up bedridden with a summer bug, and even then you’d FaceTimed for the majority of the day. Before that had been meeting most weekdays and every weekend for one reason or another, and before that you just hadn’t known each other yet. 

It’s been almost a year since you met your best friend, and thanks to that it’s been almost a year that you’ve been in love with him. 

Dave waves a hand in front of your face and you snap out of your reverie, glancing over to see him smiling in that secret way he sometimes does. “Still with me here?”

You’re half tempted to throw out a cheesy line about _being with him always,_ just to see what the fuck would happen. Instead, you bite your tongue, trying to shake off that train of thought via rapid hand flapping. “Yeah, yeah. What’s up?”

He looks at you a moment before turning his entire head away. It’s hard to suppress a laugh when he groans and sticks his hands over his eyes, shades pushing up into his hair. 

“Use your words, I know you can.”

“Fuck you.” 

That gets a laugh out of you, and he finally turns back to look at you. It’s a little more jarring when his face is bare. 

“M’just— _fuck it._ I’m really glad we met, Karkat.” Dave looks so genuine it almost hurts, panging around in your chest as you take in that little admission. 

You can’t quite force yourself to respond right away, cheeks flushing with heat as you try desperately to form words. As it is, your mouth just sort of hangs open a little. “...I am too,” you manage after a struggle, swallowing before you choke on what comes next. “Doesn’t it just... feel like fact?”

It’s Dave’s turn to blush, the color dull in comparison to how bright his eyes seem in the faint moonlight you’re both bathing in. His face morphs from surprise to smugness faster than you could swear is normal.

“Dude. Dude.... do you have a crush on me?”

This time, you do choke. 

“Fucking _what?_ ”

“Karkat. Karkat seriously. Do you?”

You remain silent. Dave groans and chews on the inside of his cheek before piping up again. 

“Remember when we met? How I ate shit on my board and you had to play handmaiden for a little?” Dave hesitates until you give in and nod. “Why d’you think I fell?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? Maybe you’re just that bad at skating down a flat stretch of concrete.”

He shakes his head and you really do have to look at him now. 

“Okay, first of all, ouch. I’m an excellent skater. Second... I wasn’t looking where the fuck I was going because I was busy staring at _you,_ man.”

All you can hear suddenly is blood rushing past your ears. “Fuck you, that’s not true.”

“It is! Come on, kitkat, I’m a simple man. I see a pretty boy looking sad on a beach and my first instinct is to investigate.”

“Pretty?”

“The prettiest.”

The two of you are locked in a staring contest for a moment, and then you break, shoulders slumping and face falling forward into your hands. “Dave Strider, I have been sitting across from you for three months straight trying so fucking hard not to kiss you every single time you were nice to me. If you tell me that I could’ve been this entire time I’m making you walk home.”

You glance up through your fingers. 

“Just so we’re clear, you _don’t_ want me to ask you to please kiss me gently in the moonlight?”

“I’m going to strangle you.”

He’s about to say something stupid, you can feel it, so you sit up and slap a hand as gently as you can over his mouth. When you feel safe enough to drop it, he cracks a grin, shades falling forward onto the bridge of his nose when he tilts his head. _Dumbass_. 

“Karkat,” he murmurs, drawing himself forward on his hand so your faces are inches apart. Dave is looking at you like a cat cornering its prey, pupils blown in the dark and voice pitched low. Dramatic. Like a scene in a movie. “Karkat, kiss me.”

You don’t budge, and he drops the act a little, leaning more upright and pressing his mouth into a line. “Dude. Please?”

This has been fun, but now your heart is pounding, and you clench your teeth before closing the distance. He’s salty, almost overwhelmingly so, and you bring a hand up to his face just as he scoots so he doesn’t have to lean to keep the kiss going. 

The only thought you can conjure is that you could’ve been doing this for a fucking year. Eleven months’ worth of teenage hormones come rushing to the surface, and you shuffle until you’re sitting on your heels, the hand that was previously holding you up now digging into Dave’s hair. His hands are on your back, fingers curling around your waist in a way that makes you shudder so obviously you almost have to tap out in embarrassment. Dave keeps you close, though, and when you feel the pull of teeth on your bottom lip your chest arches into him anyway. 

God, what the fuck. Adrenaline makes your fingers twitch, and when you try to get closer you very nearly poke your eye out with the corner of Dave’s shades. The two of you part—you’d be self conscious about how hard you’re breathing if Dave wasn’t doing the exact same thing. You laugh, breathless, and tip your foreheads together. 

“It’s getting late,” you say once your breathing has settled, sitting back a little. At some point, the two of you started holding hands. Dave’s fingers squeeze you where they interlock. “C’mon. I have to get you there and back before my parents realize I’m still out.”

Dave sighs in defeat and stands, and you haul him back to your car. 

The ride to the Strider apartment is quiet. Dave still hasn’t let go of your hand, insisting that you hold his over the center console until you’re parking out front and turning to smile at him. 

He grins. “This is kinda gay.”

“Is it? This might count as kissing a bro goodnight.” You squeeze his hand and lean over, planting another one on him as you reach to open his door. “Text me when you’re up?”

Dave nods and you part ways with one last fistbump. 

You don’t check your phone until you’re home, and when you do it’s enough to make you bury your face in your pillow and contemplate until you knock out.

TG: managed to avoid certain death   
TG: see you tomorrow  
TG: ...  
TG: <3  


**Author's Note:**

> this is the first real fic i’ve ever written and i enjoyed it immensely


End file.
